Learn about WEBP image format

Over the past few years, Google has quietly revealed a new image format called 'WebP'. WebP format has been considered a successor for popularly used JPEG. For those who are interested in using bandwidth and / or Internet speed, this is a good thing. For people who are working with digital images, this can be a headache problem.

What is WebP?

Google has spent several years creating WebP with the goal of reducing image file size without compromising on quality. To do this, the WebP image format uses a more efficient compression algorithm, which makes web image file size significantly smaller than JPEG or PNG.

According to Google, WebP format reduces image file size from about 19% to 64%. This makes the site load faster and consumes less bandwidth. Therefore, many high-traffic websites use WebP format, because the site loads faster than the user experience. Most people can agree that browsing speed is as fast as possible, so what is the problem?

Critics of WebP

Although it has been developed for about seven years, the WebP format is still not widely supported. Many of the most popular image processing tools like Adobe Photoshop cannot read WebP format. Some programs (like Photoshop) can fix this situation with third-party plugins. However, some programs cannot read WebP format completely. This makes WebP format somewhat difficult to work with. Fortunately, there is a way to convert WebP images into other popular formats.

We should also note that side effects of compression reduce image quality. Although this quality effect may not be noticeable to the average user, it may cause problems for certain professionals (eg photographers).

How to save WebP in JPEG or PNG format

Fortunately, it is possible to manually convert WebP images to their original JPEG or PNG format. In order for this little trick to work, you must use Chrome or Opera as a browser. Mozilla has reported that Firefox will receive WebP support in the future, but at the time of writing, this method works only with the above browsers.

For details, please refer to the article: How to convert WebP image to PNG, JPG on Chrome, Coc Coc.